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In Reply to: RE: Best post-Brando generation actor? posted by tinear on December 14, 2008 at 09:11:59
Washington has been excellent in every film that immediately comes to mind.
As for Crowe and Owen, they get on any list of greatness for, if nothing else, A Beautiful Mind and Children of Men respectively.
I may have my ages screwed up, but I'm not sure if Hopkins, Hackman, and Caine, are in the generation following Brando if generations are accepted as being in the range of 20-25 years. (not knocking their considerable talents, but strictly speaking, they aren't "post brando generation").
I'm gonna throw Dustin Hoffman out there as well. He excelled in films such as The Graduate, Rainman, Straight Time, Papillion, Confidence, All the Presidents Men, Kramer v Kramer, Midnight Cowboy, and Little Big Man among others.
"Poor People have been voting for Democrats for the last 50 years.......and they are still poor."
So sayeth Charles Barkley
Follow Ups:
I typed a flippin' stream of consciouness book and left *Clive* out. That's what I get for trying to work and post at the same time.Cliver Owen: I LOVE the guy - Bent, Croupier, Children of Men (my favorite film of 2006), Inside Man, Closer - I forgive Arthur and Elizabeth The Golden Age. He's the real deal. I love him more than Danile Day Lewis, who is next to divine. I don't necessarily believe him in period parts, where he never seems fully comfortable (odd for a British stage actor, but there ya go). I love Clive anyway.
Crowe - first saw him in the Aussie movies Romper Stomper and Proof, in the same year (1991?), and couldn't believe how differentand equally compelling the performances were. LA Confidential, The Insider - he shoulda won the Oscar for these roles. He carried Gladiator. He was good in a Beautiful Mind, although I don't like the film. He was a wonderful Jack Aubrey in Master & Commander. I dunno about his taste in roles though. And he ain't Mr. Sunshine. But he has the goods.
Dustin Hoffman, I'll grant you his importance if not his versatility. He's been in lots of important - and pivotal - movies, which you noted. Yet his tics drive me crazy sometimes - I can't watch Rainman to this day without squirming and twitching. And you left out Tootsie, which is Dusty at his most charming.
As for the generation gap...I understand what you mean. But for me, it's less a question of time passing (although there is at least a 10-15 year gap bewteen Brando and Hackman/Caine) than it is of aesthetics changing. There's a sea change in sensibility from the post war 1950s to the turbulent 60s and 70s.
Brando errupted onto the screen in 1951. Although he was in films for decades, and overlapped with all the people you named, Brando's most iconic and influential roles were in the early 50's. (His only truly great roles post 1950s were in The Godfathers, Last Tango In Paris and Apocalypse Now, in which his "performance" may not actually be a "performance" as normally defined). A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata (1952), On The Waterfront (1953), Julius Ceasar (1953) and The Wild One (1954) were all released before 1955.
Hackman and Duval, OTOH, gained their recognition in the new American wave of the late 1960s and 1970s. Their first great roles were in movies from maverick American directors like Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde 1967), Francis Ford Coppola, (The Godfather 1972, The Conversation 1974) and Robert Altman (Target 1968, MASH 1970) . These films were an entirely different sensibility from their counterparts from the fifties. Likewise, Michael Caine exploded in the mid-sixties onto the international scene in Alfie (1966), which was young, hip, cynical and irreverent. In between The Wild One and Bonnie & Clyde were The Beatles, swinging London, the Pill, the Kennedy and King assasinations, Viet Nam, civil rights marches, soldiers shooting at college students on campus, LSD, Jimi Hendrix and the French New Wave. From Brando's slicked back ducktail and leathers we had gone to freak flags flying and bell bottoms.
The old studio system was breaking down in the 1960s. Hollywood talent had been decimated by the McCarthy hearings. The youthquake was in full swing. The studios had hip, up and coming directors like Coppola, Penn, Altman, Mike Nichols, Peter Yates, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski and Alan Pakula helming projects. Robert Altman and William Friedkin (The Thin Blue Line, French Connection) had crossed over from TV to feature films. Peter Bogdonavich laid down his pen and made Targets and The Last Picture Show. Sidney Lumet was working within the studio system but breaking out. Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg gave Warner Brothers studio execs heart attacks with Performance (and the experience reportedly gave star James Fox a nervous breakdown). Kubrick was fed up with Hollywood and moved to England (permanently as it turned out).
In England...Richard Lester was making us dance and laugh with The Beatles in a Hard Days Night, as well as instructing us on The Knack And How To Get It; Ken Loach was shining a neo-realist light on the working class in Poor Cow and Kes; Antonioni was making a beautiful, mysterious film about swinging London in Blow Up; Joseph Losey fled red-baiting persecution in Hollywood to make the gripping and creepy The Servant and the wistful and twisted The Go Between; Tony Richardson was having a ball sending up 18th century toffs in Tom Jones; Lindsay Anderson was terrifying the establishment with If; Syndey Furie made a star of a sandy haired cockney actor named Michael Caine in The Ipcress File;
By the 1970s you had bad boys Martin Scorsese, Milos Forman, Terence Malick, George Lucas (yes, really, he was considered a weird kid in those days), Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino and John Boorman working in Hollywood. By the end of the decade John Carpenter and George Romero would be launched.
Brando paved the way for a lot of what came in the 60s and 70s. There are only 16 years between between Streetcar Named Desire and Bonnie & Clyde. (11 years between The Wild One and B&C.) But 1951/1954 and 1967 are a world apart. FWIW, a young Anthony Hopkins' first major role was as Richard The Lionheart in the 1968 Lion In Winter.
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Edits: 12/15/08
"Last Tango in Paris" deserves special mention. The only way to describe it is transcendent, explosive, searing, and other such terms. One thing is sure, his performance set a benchmark for realism, for tearing through the screen, which likely will never even be equalled. The film, for me, hasn't aged a day nor the performance loss one degreee of its heat.
...probably his best role and a soul searing performance by any standard. This was Brando at his most personal, truthful and vulnerable, achieving his most universal appeal. I haven't seen LTIP in about 15 years and would like to again.
Don Corleone was a well crafted performance, memorable, perfectly judged, but Brando didn't personally invested himself in the role the way he did in LT - I grant you, it didn't require it either. But LT was the role of a lifetime and remains a very special performance. You'd have to go back to Streetcar or On The Waterfront to find anything comparable and LT may be Brando's best ever..
Brando in Apocalypse Now ...whacked, man, very whacked out.
Fiirst, great post. And point taken on the "generation gap" between Brando and Hackman, Caine, Duvall etc...
I initially questioned including Hoffman on the basis of vesatility, but as I ran over his ouvre (how could I have left Tootsie off?? Senior moment?), I thought about the power he brought to the gangster in Confidence, the ultimate sleazeball Ratso in Midnight Cowboy, the confusion of Benjamin Bratt in The Graduate, the inevitable recidivism he brought to the hard con Going Straight, and found plenty enuf versatility to warrant inclusion. And yes, his character in Rainman was fascinating, but once was plenty enuf... \\
As far as Tommy Lee Jones, hos work in The Executioners Song, In The Valley of Elah, No Country..., Lonesome Dove, etc. warrant inclusion IMHO. Still going strong in his early(?) 60s with his last two as good as anything he's done. A bit one dimensional perhaps, but man, does he ever nail that dimension.
"Poor People have been voting for Democrats for the last 50 years.......and they are still poor."
So sayeth Charles Barkley
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